


Birdfood

by GAT3R



Category: Gears of War (Video Games)
Genre: Blood and Violence, Gen, Past Character Death
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-09-12
Updated: 2019-09-12
Packaged: 2020-10-16 21:53:44
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,005
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20609921
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/GAT3R/pseuds/GAT3R
Summary: Through the killing, Carmine remembers. And hates.





	Birdfood

It's still fighting him.

Even now, with more and more of its hot, smelly blood leaking from various wounds on its white and brown body and the gaping tear in its neck, the grub continues to struggle and growl despite his hand buried around its throat.

Through all of the disgust and sheer, overwhelming hate for the dying locust and the rest of its kind, the way it's trying to cling to life despite everything against it makes him think of his brother.

Anthony's death had been quick, from what he'd heard. He'd forgotten one of the most basic rules of engagement: keep your head down. He'd lost his head for it. Clayton would never say he was grateful, but he saw it as a small mercy that his brother hadn't suffered. That was more than he could say for countless soldiers. Countless civilians too.

Benjamin hadn't been so fortunate.

His baby brother had always been a bit too eager to prove himself. He was skilled and brave, but more than a little foolhardy and desperate to distinguish himself. Clayton had seen it, he'd dealt with it more times than he could remember when they were growing up, but he hadn't realized just how badly his baby brother had wanted to live up to his name until it was too late. And now Benjamin was gone.

He'd survived fighting alongside the Delta squad, the same team of gears that had soon gone on to wipe out the Locust hordes entirely.

Benjamin hadn't made it that far. He'd tried to play the hero and stay behind to cover their chopper, and he'd ended up falling out and dying inside the body of the giant worm the hordes had been using to sink cities. It hadn't been a quick death.

Some people would have been proud. His brother's first taste of combat had been more intense than what most gears saw in their first year. Clayton told them to shut the fuck up. His brothers were dead. Fuck their pride.

He'd drag every person who blathered about bravery to Benjamin's corroded corpse and have them spout all of their shit at him. See what good it did.

His brothers were gone. Just another pair of bodies in a war that had already created too many to count. The oldest sibling was supposed to keep the younger ones safe. To help them and make sure they grew up well.

He'd failed amazingly there. And now the war was over and humanity was making a living on ships to survive the flooded ruins of what had once been their home. He'd even heard about Santiago becoming obsessed with his crops to distract himself from whatever he'd found in the Locust hive.

And now they're stuck fighting the Locust again. Only now they're glowing, and somehow they're even uglier than before. Lambent is what they're called. It turns out that even these monsters aren't immune to the side effects of imulsion.

He doesn't care what they're called. They'll die like the rest.

17 years of war, millions dead, and still he's stuck here. Dealing with another fucking grub after everything he'd lost. Everything that has been sacrificed to wipe these things out.

So he chooses to channel his anger as productively as he knows how. By killing every single one that he can reach with whatever he has on him. Bullets, the buzzsaw attached to his lancer, grenades, whatever.

At this point there's only one left, and it's bleeding out all over his arm. It tries to raise it's arms and swing at him, but it's too weak.

The streets are littered with the bodies of its fellow monstrosities, and soon it's going to join them.

The regular Locust were called grubs, and the name fit. Slimy, disgusting, pale white, and constantly showing up where they weren't wanted, but honestly? He thinks it fits the average Lambent even more. Grubs are supposed to be almost shiny right? Because of the slime or whatever they fuck their bodies were naturally made of? He hadn't paid too much attention to the specifics as a child, when his mother showed him her garden. Another addition to the long list of ways he'd failed his family.

But yes, it fits the Lambent well as far as he's concerned. Their glowing, malformed bodies evoked the same feeling of disgust he'd felt the first time he'd seen the wriggling things in the garden, but with all of the hatred that all things Locust made him feel.

Eventually, the grub's struggling stops and it goes limp in his hand. The wet splash of the growths on its body as it meets the pavement is the only sound for a moment, until he finally registers the drumbeat of his own heart.

He'd had a squad with him, hadn't he? He can recall shouting orders and seeing uniformed soldiers in the area, but he honestly can't remember whether they had been fighting alongside him or just a different group that had just been in the same area.

How long has he been fighting? 

It doesn't matter anyways. Somewhere there's another thousand of these things doing its best to kill and destroy whatever they've got left, so he doesn't need to think. Just go where he's ordered and kill every inhuman sonuvabitch dumb enough to get in his way.

He remembers something. Despite their physical appearance and the threat they posed to crops, grubs have a single good point that makes up for their many failings.

They're a real blast to watch getting torn apart by the birds that swooped down into their garden.

It's almost poetic. He used to watch animals tearing through the dirt to devour the nasty little parasites that spent their time burrowing underground and threatening the work he'd done to keep the plants alive, and here he was taking the bird's place.

Clayton isn't one for poetry or any flowery bullshit, but he can appreciate the humor in the situation.

He doesn't even like birds.

**Author's Note:**

> Gears 5 revitalized my interest in the series, so here you go.


End file.
